Page 1 of Scrap Metal & Love Reforged

Chapter One

Troy

Iscrolled through the feed on my phone—or tried to, anyway. It’s tough when every swipe risks slicing open your finger on the cracked glass. This phone has had a hard life.

“How hard was it?”my inner voice chimed in.

It’s so hard that you could dig up the Crimean Peninsula, find a horse from the Charge of the Light Brigade, and probably unearth my phone beneath a shattered horseshoe.

Yes, my poor phone's tragic state was made worse by my lack of funds to replace it. So, I dealt with the broken, uneven screen despite cutting myself on it on more than one occasion.

The Bluehaven sales group wasn’t proving too fruitful. Usually, there were at least a couple of listings that had potential, and when your art was junk assemblage, (pretty junk made from ugly junk) it wasn’t like you had high standards.

I made my art from junk, from broken bits of metal and crumpled motors. Bits and pieces that other people ignoreand toss away. I’d gotten pretty good hauls in the past from surveying these usual threads. But not today.

I leaned on the counter and glanced at the door. No customers. There had been some earlier. We’d had a freakish cold snap, merciless to both tires and batteries, so early in the morning the shop had been inundated with angry distressed customers. But now it was three in the afternoon, and there wasn’t a soul to be found…except for me, of course. And Janet, who was on the phone trying to figure out where a promised cabin air filter was that hadn’t come in for a customer.

I flipped to another tab and sorted through myDiscordthreads. There wasn’t much going on there either. I frowned and opened my private conversation with Godofdiscord.

Discordbeing a forum for friendly chat, I wondered why Godofdiscord was seemingly so conceited as to think he ran the place.

“I think I’ll die of boredom today,”I typed.

Godofdiscorddidn’t appear to be online, but I could count on him saying something funny when he came on again. A pity, I’d have enjoyed a conversation.

Janet swore, and I glanced over my shoulder as she emerged from the back office. She was five-feet-two-inches of hell on wheels. Her face was flushed, her dark brown hair frizzed out and wild. She’d probably run her fingers through it a few times. She did that when she got frustrated. “This is fucking ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Dammit!”

Yeah, she was definitely frustrated.

Janet had a mouth that would piss off a nun.

“Don’t tell me. Let me guess—the cabin air filter isn’t arriving tomorrow?”

“No, smartass,” Janet replied. “The vendor sent it to another mechanic! Can you believe it? There’s a Bluehaven Mechanicsin Florida. Florida!! As far from us as you can get! They sent it there!”

I winced. “Is that Gloria’s part?”

Janet sighed. Her green eyes spoke volumes. It was Gloria’s freaking part. Son of a gun.

Of all the regulars we had in the shop, Gloria Dalloway was infamous around here. I wasn’t sure whether it was bad luck or bad driving, but Gloriaalwayshad something wrong with her car. Always. And it was always the shop’s fault, of course. I’d seen her come in with her oil pan half-torn off and rattling along the ground as she drove in. She climbed out and complained about the noise.

“If we’re lucky, Gloria will be out of town,” Janet said, “Forever.”

Somehow, I doubted it.

Janet ran her hands through her hair again. “I hate my life,” she muttered.

“You want me to call her?” I offered.

Janet sighed. “No. She hates you, remember? You rotated her tires when she didn’t ask, and now she thinks you’re sabotaging her.”

“It was afreerotation! And besides, Chris was the one—”

Janet sighed. “Tell that toher. Better luck arguing with a cadaver. No, I’ll call her back. With any luck, she won’t want to talk to me, either. Then, she can deal with Arthur.”

“Lucky man,” I said dryly.

Janet’s lips pursed into a small smirk. “Good. He always says I exaggerate how bad she is. Now, he can deal with her and see how he likes it.”